reading

Contents

Acknowledgments

1 The First Americans

Imagining Eden

Native American Oral Traditions

Spanish and French Encounters with America

Anglo-American Encounters

Writing of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

Puritan narratives

Challenges to the Puritan oligarchy

Some colonial poetry

Enemies within and without

Trends toward the secular and resistance

Toward the Revolution

Alternative voices of Revolution

Writing Revolution: Poetry, drama, fiction

2 Inventing Americas

Making a Nation

The Making of American Myths

Myths of an emerging nation

The making of Western myth

The making of Southern myth

Legends of the Old Southwest

The Making of American Selves

The Transcendentalists

Voices of African-American identity

The Making of Many Americas

Native American writing

Oral culture of the Hispanic Southwest

African-American polemic and poetry

Abolitionist and pro-slavery writing

Abolitionism and feminism

African-American writing

The Making of an American Fiction and Poetry

The emergence of American narratives

Women writers and storytellers

Spirituals and folk songs

American poetic voices

3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future

Rebuilding a Nation

The Development of Literary Regionalism

From Adam to outsider

Regionalism in the West and Midwest

African-American and Native American voices

Regionalism in New England

Regionalism in the South

The Development of Literary Realism and Naturalism

Capturing the commonplace

Capturing the real thing

Toward Naturalism

The Development of Women’s Writing

Writing by African-American women

Writing and the condition of women

The Development of Many Americas

Things fall apart

Voices of resistance

Voices of reform

The immigrant encounter

4 Making It New

Changing National Identities

Between Victorianism and Modernism

The problem of race

Building bridges: Women writers

Critiques of American provincial life

Poetry and the search for form

The Inventions of Modernism

Imagism, Vorticism, and Objectivism

Making it new in poetry

Making it new in prose

Making it new in drama

Traditionalism, Politics, and Prophecy

The uses of traditionalism

Populism and radicalism

Prophetic voices

Community and Identity

Immigrant writing

Native American voices

The literature of the New Negro movement and beyond

Mass Culture and the Writer

Western, detective, and hardboiled fiction

Humorous writing

Fiction and popular culture

5 Negotiating the American Century

Toward a Transnational Nation

Formalists and Confessionals

From the mythological eye to the lonely “I” in poetry

From formalism to freedom in poetry

The uses of formalism

Confessional poetry

New formalists, new confessionals

Public and Private Histories

Documentary and dream in prose

Contested identities in prose

Crossing borders: Some women prose writers

Beats, Prophets, Aesthetes, and New Formalists

Rediscovering the American voice: The Black Mountain writers

Restoring the American vision: The San Francisco Renaissance

Recreating American rhythms: The beat generation

Reinventing the American self: The New York poets

Redefining American poetry: The New Formalists

Resisting orthodoxy: Dissent and experiment in fiction

The Art and Politics of Race

Defining a new black aesthetic

Defining a new black identity in prose

Defining a new black identity in drama

Telling impossible stories: Recent African-American fiction

Realism and its Discontents

Confronting the real, stretching the realistic in drama

New Journalists and dirty realists

Language and Genre

Watching nothing: Postmodernity in prose

The actuality of words: Postmodern poetry

Signs and scenes of crime, science fiction, and fantasy

Creating New Americas

Dreaming history: European immigrant writing

Remapping a nation: Chicano/a and Latino/a writing

Improvising America: Asian-American writing

New and ancient songs: The return of the Native American

After the Fall: American Literature since 9/11

Writing the crisis in prose

Writing the crisis in drama

Writing the crisis in poetry

Further Reading

Bibliographies and Reference Works

Anthologies

Chapter 1 The First Americans: American Literature Before and During the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

Chapter 2 Inventing Americas: The Making of American Literature, 1800–1865

Chapter 3 Reconstructing the Past, Reimagining the Future: The Development of American Literature, 1865–1900

Chapter 4 Making It New: The Emergence of Modern American Literature, 1900–1945

Chapter 5 Negotiating the American Century: American Literature since 1945

Index

Wiley End User License Agreement

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gray, Richard J.
A history of American literature / Richard Gray. – 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-9229-3 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4051-9228-6 (paper)
1. American literature–History and criticism. I. Title.
PS88.G73 2011
810.9–dc23

2011026044

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDF: 9781444345674; ePub: 9781444345681; Wiley Online Library: 9781444345704; Mobi: 9781444345698

Acknowledgments

In this history of American literature, I have tried to be responsive to the immense changes that have occurred over the past forty years in the study of American literature. In particular, I have tried to register the plurality of American culture and American writing: the continued inventing of communities, and the sustained imagining of nations, that constitute the literary history of the United States. I have accumulated many debts in the course of working on this book. In particular, I would like to thank friends at the British Academy, including Andrew Hook, Jon Stallworthy, and Wynn Thomas; colleagues and friends at other universities, among them Kasia Boddy, Susan Castillo, Henry Claridge, Richard Ellis, the late Kate Fullbrook, Mick Gidley, Sharon Monteith, Judie Newman, Helen Taylor, and Nahem Yousaf; and colleagues and friends in other parts of Europe and in Asia and the United States, especially Saki Bercovitch, Bob Brinkmeyer, the late George Dekker, Jan Nordby Gretlund, Lothar Honnighausen, Bob Lee, Marjorie Perloff, and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. Among my colleagues in the Department of Literature, I owe a special debt of thanks to Herbie Butterfield and Owen Robinson; I also owe special thanks to my many doctoral students. Sincere thanks are also due to Emma Bennett, the very best of editors, at Wiley-Blackwell for steering this book to completion, to Theo Savvas for helping so much and so efficiently with the research and preparation, and to Nick Hartley for his informed and invaluable advice on illustrations. Special thanks are also due to Brigitte Lee and Jack Messenger for, once again, proving themselves to be such thoughtful, meticulous, and creative copyeditors, and to my daughter Jessica for (also once again) making such a first-class job of proofreading and the compilation of the index. On a more personal note, I would like to thank my older daughter, Catharine, for her quick wit, warmth, intelligence, and understanding, and for providing me with the very best of son-in-laws, Ricky Baldwin, and two perfect grandsons, Izzy and Sam; my older son, Ben, for his thoughtfulness, courage, commitment, and good company; my younger daughter, Jessica, for her lively intelligence, grace, and kindness, as well as her refusal to take anything I say on trust; and my younger son, Jack, who, being without language, constantly reminds me that there are other, deeper ways of communicating. Finally, as always, I owe the deepest debt of all to my wife, Sheona, for her patience, her good humor, her clarity and tenderness of spirit, and for her love and support, for always being there when I need her. Without her, this book would never have been completed: which is why, quite naturally, it is dedicated to her.